The invention relates to a vertical or bow-type continuous casting machine for steel, whereby the steel melt is led from a charging funnel through a heated feeding part of refractory material into a cooled mold.
On a known continuous casting machine of this type a funnel shaped casting vessel is provided with a casting pipe which freely extends up to bath level in the mold. To avoid heat losses electric heating resistances are built into the casting pipe. Above the bath level is an externally sealed space into which is conducted gas for the constant maintenance of bath level and discharged through A counterpressure valve (DE-AS No. 21 18 149).
This continuous casting machine with gas-pressure-regulated bath level is rather expensive. The casting pipe freely extending into the mold requires a minimum width of mold opening so that it is not possible to cast very thin formats. The arrangement of the heating coils in the casting pipe is fairly costly considering its wear and tear and is uneconomical.
There is already known a continuous casting equipment where a casting vessel is downwardly narrowed like a funnel to a casting pipe whose outside wall abuts sealingly at the inside wall of the mold. The melt hereby totally fills out mold and casting pipe. The bath level is in the casting vessel. (Handbook of Continuous Casting, Herrmann 1958, page 158, FIG. 597) Also hereby the diameter of the casting pipe determines the necessary minimum width of the mold opening. Because of the butment of the casting pipe at the mold wall there arise corners in which may occur unfavorable freezing of the melt and thus penetrations of the strand shell.